Phantoms
by TiniestDormouse
Summary: Scars fade, but the impressions remain. Spoilers from Retrace 78 and beyond to a speculative "post-series" end. Gilbert-centric. With Ozbert and one-sided Vince/Gil. Dedicated to Corwin on his birthday. Rated T for violence and sexual situations.


Title: Phantoms

Characters: Gilbert. Break. Vincent. Oz.

Rating: PG-13 for violence and a bit of non-descriptive smexiness.

Words: 4,082

Summary: Scars fade, but the impressions remain. Spoilers from Retrace 78 and beyond to a speculative "post-series" end. Gilbert-centric. With Ozbert and one-sided Vince/Gil.

Note: Happy (belated) birthday gift for Corwin.

* * *

Phantoms

"Um, uh, why don't you cover it?"

Gilbert always wondered. This was a question that felt far too personal, but obviously the exposed injury was meant to be flaunted, because Xerxes Break was a man who never spared an opportunity to provoke.

Tiny snowflakes, shards of crystal, made a frost-tinged web across Gil's own eyelashes as they circled each other in the empty courtyard. He hastily brushed his sleeve across his eyes and raised his left arm, the saber tilted at an unsteady angle. Break fought ambidextrously, and it was one of the many skills he pressed upon the black-haired youth.

"Hmmm?" Break brushed back the drape of silvery hair from his eye. In one deft swing, metal clanged upon metal and Gilbert's sword arm buckled.

"Your… your eye." An awkward heat flushed across the boy's cheeks. He bowed his head and bit his lower lip. Was that even appropriate to ask? "You never cover it."

Truthfully, Gilbert didn't like swordplay, because it required one to be intimately close in order to kill. Break was training the young boy to be a killer, but the thought of being exactly _there_ at the moment of death disturbed him. Knowing it. Feeling the pressure of a blade slicing through another, close enough for the blood and the gore to splatter…His stomach churned in disgust. Maybe he could persuade the Pandora officer that he'd be better at something else. Maybe gunslinging. Yes, Gilbert liked the sound of that: keeping a distance between him and the victim, so he didn't even—

_clang!_

Gilbert skittered backwards. The steel edges ricocheted off each other and Gilbert, nerves lost, dropped the weapon. It clattered to the ground.

"You're not keeping your form." Break spit out the lollipop stick dangling from his lips with a little huff. His breath stirred the hair in front of his eyes again, and the missing one flashed before Gil like a leer. "Pay more attention. Unless you prefer a sword in your chest."

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Gilbert scrambled for the blade, but instead of going back into first position, he asked again, "Some of the officers wear a patch, and I was thinking about whether you're afraid of getting, uh, dust motes or your hair or something mussed up in it…" His voice trailed off as he fidgeted with the saber handle. Too large and unwieldy. He imagined instead the sleek compact groove of a pistol handle. Easier to control. Easier to shoot and run and not have to clean anything after. Gilbert shuddered until Break's snide tone cut that train of thought.

"Am I lax about my hygiene?" The pale man smirked. "Sometimes, I don't even realize it's gone. Well, besides the lack of depth perception." He raised his sword again. "But that's never stopped me, has it?"

Gilbert imitated his gesture with less confidence. His arm felt as if made of lead and moved the same way. Break disarmed him again and tossed his sword from one palm to the other as he did so, that hollow eye mocking him. "C'mon, Gilbert. Stop gaping and pick it up."

Later on, when he traded the sword for a gun, that sensation didn't leave. Gilbert supposed the weight he bore was the power of taking another life.

888

_Bodies contain memories, etched into skin, stretched across muscle, connected by ligaments and tendon-bound._

888

The man's skull cracked against the cobblestones as he fell. That was how Gilbert knew that he was most certainly dead.

"Double-tap, Mr. Gilbert."

"But-"

"Are you going to assume that he won't get up again? Better men have gotten killed because of lesser oversights."

A twirl of his cane as Break leaned against the alleyway wall. Gilbert grumbled that he made the mark, he was sure of it, that two shots to the chest was enough and it was late in their patrol so they might as well—

"Is that what you're going to tell Oz if there're ever armed men after him? That you're sure they're dead because you think you hit them?"

"Damn you!" snapped Gilbert, for that was what Break did when it came down to the worst aspects of the job. Pulled out Oz's name like a card from a magician's sleeve, bandied it about. Gil wasn't going to take it any more, not after dozens have died (even though they had been deserving claimed Pandora, these were criminals explained Pandora, _this was the job you signed up for, didn't you, Gilbert Nightray?_)

_Double-tap._ Gil lifted the gun. _That empty socket's a perfect spot to double-tap— a ball of lead to replace the eye he lost—_

Immediately, knuckles tightened in shock. Gilbert clutched his left wrist and immediately, the pistol loosened in his hold as he slumped forward.

"Hmmmm?" Break tilted his head to the side.

_Why did I think that?_ Gilbert stared at his hands. Ones that had grown accustomed to killing. Why was he reluctant to see a stranger dead, but had the sudden thought of murdering Break in cold blood (because he hated that man, because the clown tormented him, because_—_)? Although a black flame clouded his head, he had never conceived of doing _that_ before…He always killed because he was ordered to, because he _had_ to, not because he _wanted—_

_What have I become?_

He flexed the muscles of his hand. Curled the fingers into a ball. Uncurled them, one by one. His joints had stiffened from clenching too tightly. Carefully, he raised his head, tendrils of hair brushing across his face. The threat unfurled slowly from his lips, coming from that dark place Gilbert always knew he possessed.

"Mention that name again that way and I _will_ murder you, bastard."

Eyebrows arched and the man's casual musing expression slackened. "Gilbert," he started softly, before the younger man shoved him out of the way and stomped over to the corpse.

He unloaded all his remaining bullets into the man's skull before he obeyed his partner's order to stop.

888

_Mental awareness associates memories to the body, for without it, a single human is nothing but masses of cells that live and die a million-fold over the course of a lifespan. Only the mind can recall where the memories are placed inside the flesh, the points of contact, the lingering._

888

"Does big brother's hand bother him again?"

Gilbert hunched further over his cup of wine. Vincent sat across the kitchen table from him and lowered his own glass (white wine, since they never touch the red, not on the rare occasions they drank together.)

"Is the Raven hurting you?"

"No." Lies. The Chain's claim upon Gilbert gnawed on him, locked him tight into an obligation that tarnished him even further. The demon bird deemed him worthy, yes, but the sting of that Contract made his muscles seize and twitch in ways he knew he did not control. He had no idea what he controlled nowadays – he didn't even have his name. Gilbert discarded his identity once more to gain the title of a monster. The Raven was Gilbert and Gilbert the Raven, a moniker which echoed down the hallways of Pandora and was uttered in bitter disdain from the lips of the elder nobles in this very household.

He rubbed the silk of his gloved palm and took another drink from his glass.

"Please, let me." Before he could protest, Vincent reached across the scarred wooden surface and grabbed his wrist to slip the covering away from his right hand, exposing the roughened skin and calluses that had formed from his years working among shadows. His brother's fingers, small-boned, refined, and childlishly soft from his pampered lifestyle, pressed down against the center of Gilbert's palm, rubbing in concentric circles. The pressure of those manicured fingertips was firm, stronger than Gilbert anticipated.

A sigh escaped him as Vincent focused on massaging that toughened plain. Vince asked, "You ever speak to the traveler women that come through town? They read palms for a sixpence."

Gilbert shook his head, grumbling, "No, certainly not. What they say is all poppycock."

"I know." In a light tone, Vincent began naming all of the dips and valleys he touched, tracing along lines for the heart, the head, of life and fate (crossed and broken), squeezing the mount of Venus and the two hills for Mars, gently tugging and rotating each digit as the names of gods and stars dripped from his tongue. He worked upon one hand and then the other, and Gilbert let him, since no one had coaxed his hands into submission before in a way that slackened whatever had pulled him taut.

Vincent stopped with Gil's left one cradled between his two, stroking with both thumbs.

"They say this hand contains all that's past and your other holds the future." His wistfulness made Gilbert stir from the lull that the massage had draped over him. Strange, how a single touch on one part can transform the whole. Vincent smiled, and there was a grief inside it that Gilbert also found strange.

Quickly, Vincent placed a kiss upon the center of his palm. Gilbert yanked his hand away, face flushing. Satisfaction danced in his brother's eyes.

"Gods, Vince, why'd you-"

"Oh Gil, I'm only having a bit of fun," he replied in his sing-song voice, one that cued them both that he didn't mean anything he did (but Gilbert was never sure with his younger sibling). "That helped, didn't it?"

Gilbert had to admit it did and hastily excused himself after finishing the rest of his glass in one gulp that made his face go aflame from latent intoxication.

"Not that I believe those superstitious whores," laughed Vincent as Gil left him in the dim, empty kitchen. "They spew as many lies as you do, brother," came the whispered remark, and Gilbert glanced behind as the door closed between them. The silvery arc of spilled wine before the glass smashed upon the fireplace hearth was the last thing he saw.

It would be nearly a year until Gil spent time alone with Vincent again.

888

_When a part of the body is lost, the mind can retain the memory of this missing limb. A ghostly shadow anchored to the foundations of the person's conception of themselves, linked to a past recollection of always being there._

888

"Gil, let me go!"

Flecks of burning lingered in the air. Gil tasted ash upon his tongue and knew it was the remnants of charred meat from his own scorched bones.

"We went through an awful lot of horrible thing…I even ended up resenting you, and I felt so bad about it I wanted to _die._"

Parts of Gil's will raced ahead of this moment, across the slippery lawn, back into Pandora Headquarters, down the stonewalled corridors, screaming Oz's name. But that moment was not this one, as Gil held Vincent closer with hands blackened by dried blood as the younger blond resisted. Rain soaked their clothing, sent rivulets down the smothering hollow at Gil's side, cool enough to burn. The nerves, deadened to a crisp, began to tingle. As Gilbert continued his confession, he sensed jumping pinpricks as these nerves bloomed into agonizing life once more. The forces of the Abyss grew stronger as the world crumbled and the cosmic force triggered the slow healing process where the Raven extinguished their old Contract.

"But all that is part of what I am. It's a part if it. All of it."

The darkness and the light, the loathing and the fear and the terror and the need and the loneliness and the cowardliness… Everything slammed into Gilbert as he had lain down on that cold, hard mattress, transfixed by the hand that shot Oz. The hand that betrayed him. His body lay curled like a thoughtless pen stroke upon the parchment-colored bedding, wet and thin and permanent, as the memories seeped down into the layers of himself.

Gilbert had been lost and fearful but now, only relief washed through him as the rain cleansed the tears from his cheeks and dribbled down his nose and matted the dirt and the gore into his thin shirt. Understanding that he had peered into the depths of that wretchedness and still had a _choice_. His _will_ remained; he _chose_ to bask in this beautiful rain and the embrace his Chain's fire boiling his blood and forging him anew.

"It's something I won't give up!"

Vincent's eyes darted in tiny movements along the ground. At the stump where his left arm had been. At the muscle and bone that had been cauterized by the Raven's blue fire. At the ground churning into mud at their feet.

Gilbert shook his brother in his arms.

"Vince…I…"

The blond recoiled like a broken beast. Gilbert pulled him nearer, close enough that Vincent had to pay attention, whether from the sudden proximity of the gut-churning stink of roasted meat that Gilbert did not even smell as he danced in the whirlwind of elation.

"I'm glad you were always by my side."

Those eyes, usually cast in a soporific indifference, widened, the frighteningly alert eyes of a little boy. Gilbert held Vincent by the shoulders, his breath creating a billow of heat between their faces.

The wind lashed across their backs, forming a sheet of the rain that broke against Gilbert and his brother as they stood before each other. Gilbert trembled, shaking the wet locks of hair from his face. "I will not let anyone condemn my own brother."

He extended his open arms.

"Help me. Let's save everyone and leave this place. Together."

Vincent fell without a sound into the damp. His response sounded muffled in Gilbert's ears— not because he wasn't paying attention, but because the adrenaline caused by that onrush to freedom had engulfed his soul. He was a bird on the wing. There was so much to be done. Too much.

The Raven inside urged him to fly. To soar. The broken carcere lay forgotten in the grass amongst the raindrops. Gilbert committed the most heinous act he thought impossible, but in the wake of his monstrosity earned the truth he always denied. Yes, indeed, the Raven was Gilbert and Gilbert the Raven. Yet Gilbert was Gilbert too: brother, betrayer, servant, killer, friend.

Vincent did not take hold of him that time, but Gilbert presented himself just the same, waiting for his brother's touch. Hinging on his trust in Vincent, entirely assured that there can be no more secrets between them, not anymore. He knew everything about himself and was not ashamed. Moreso, he recognized everything about his brother and was not ashamed of him either. So at the time, Gilbert meant to give everything he could to Vincent as he whispered those words into his ear before he went to rescue his Oz: "_Just don't leave me, Vincent. Don't ever._"

Only in the distant aftermath of that significant battle did Gilbert peg that moment as the very first time it happened. He saw and moved and acted as being entirely complete, through he knew quite well that one arm had been utterly and irrevocably destroyed.

888

_Movement and sensation resist erasure, though the physical flesh may be destroyed. Pain resurrects itself, haunting the space of missing tissue, vein, bone, blood. An ache that should not even exist, but nevertheless perseveres._

_These bodily phenomenons are known as phantom limbs._

888

Half-remembered nightmares jolted Gilbert awake (there was never a period he didn't have nightmares in his life, in fact, except in these latest incarnations, past faces are more distinct, instead of blurred in a haze of guilt and denial.) Sweat coated his brow, and instinctively, he reached two wipe it away and felt the failure prevail as the shortened stub twitched. But his ghost arm moved. Gilbert didn't see it move, but sensed the vibrato of the air shifting around translucent fingers, the bend at the elbow, the sensation of pins and needles…all resulting in an empty gesture.

"Gilbert?"

Beside him, bedcovers stirred and Oz's sleepy face peeked out from the blankets. He had the duvet wrapped around his head while he slumbered, and made a poor impression of a northern babushka when awake. His Oz, ridiculous and adorable. Wisps of horror rescinded from Gil's head, though the insubstantial throbbing in his left arm did not.

"Nothing…"

"It's back again, though."

The dimmed lantern bathed everything in a soft fairy-lit glow. Oz's face remained partly in shadow, except for the vibrancy of his eyes. Seeing his Oz beside Gilbert stirred a deep-seated contentment. He couldn't believe this – their survival from the Baskervilles, the restoration of balance to the world (under a new system where no cursed child would ever have to die again), but most of all, having the one named Oz – just Oz – share his bed in the months afterward as they both recovered. Gilbert was never the one to think in miracles, but being able to feel Oz's legs tangled against his was some kind of blessing.

Gilbert sat up, holding in his grimace, letting the sheets fall away to reveal the limp nightshirt sleeve twisted beside him. He rubbed his left shoulder, trying to will that invisible throbbing ache away. He found Oz's fingertips meet his there and they entwined their hands. A half-smile crossed his face.

"Don't worry. It'll go away in a bit."

"Can I…?"

Oz never needed to ask and surely, he unbuttoned the front of Gil's shirt and pulled the linen material down to bare his shoulders. He reached out to touch the landscape of scarred flesh. It wasn't a clean heal. Ruptured veins exploded in the dip below his clavicle, forming earthen-colored bursts beneath his skin. A knob of bone – oddly smooth as satin over sea glass – jutted out where the humerus had been seared off. The remnants of his arm were covered by folded scar tissue like melted beeswax. Fingers graced the ridges and as Gilbert watched, his heart sank. The ghost of sensation vanished as Oz brushed over nerves that only sent out intermittent bursts of feeling. The young man seemed to caress tanned stone and not a real body. Gilbert, self-conscious, edged away.

"Please." Guilt lapped at the edges of Gilbert's mind. "It's not a loss, y'know."

"No, it isn't. But it's warm," breathed Oz and Gilbert sat, stunned.

The youth continued his explorations. Gilbert reciprocated, stroking across Oz's torso at the star-shaped mark from a gunshot wound (a sharp stab came and both of them shuddered). Oz stopped focusing on the wound and traversed more familiar territory using tiny wet kisses and firm strokes (he knew it was useless to touch his sacrificial wound to instigate any kind of pleasure for Gilbert). Down Gil's chest, skirting that other sacrificial scar, edging the waistband and then further below. Together they moved, skin upon skin, tasting each other eagerly. Their pace quickened; their touches progressed. Long moans filled the room's silence and Gilbert cannot fathom that he'd ever tire of this beautiful young man and his glorious, ravenous need.

Afterward, the shorter youth took refuge against his side, nestled against that hollow space where his left arm used to be, head resting against Gilbert's chest, breathing softly. Oz's arms wrapped tightly, his hair a golden halo in the dimness, tucked against the crater of the wound.

888

_These corporeal apparitions are manifestations of the mind._

_Phantom limbs – born from terrible circumstance, hardship, and tragedy – espouse a single truth, however._

_The belief that, somehow, life remains._

888

_I never lost a thing,_ Gilbert thought. He leaned his face into the dandelion-colored fluff at the crown of Oz's head and inhaled deeply in search of the scent he knew so well._I only became whole again._

_And gained a space for you to fit._

When he said these thoughts aloud, Oz gave a half-hearted thump against his back as they rolled together on the bed.

"You're such an idiot."

888

_Thus, these ghosts of the body defy time and reality. New memories become blended with the old. Duration and experience temper them, cast them into new shapes molded from scraps and detritus. Past bleeds into present. Yesterday's face smiles a baby's grin, ever coy, ever fresh-faced and expectant._

_Pieces are never lost or forgotten, but each part is essential to a person's life._

888

The phantoms don't leave.

Webs of memories stretch across Gilbert's life. Recounted days, replayed nights. Occasionally, time stutters on accident: that's when Gilbert forgets. A water glass shatters onto the floor from an impossible attempt at a catch. The curse of the Raven (once a recalcitrant tool, now an invaluable friend) returns, and his former claws dig into the nonexistent muscle. Calling Lady Ada "Miss" though she married long ago. Discovering a new confectioner that Break would like, until the realization sinks in that his colleague and friend is gone (how dare he, the bastard).

He tries things. There's a dark-skinned man from the South who instructs Gilbert to put his living arm in a box with a mirror placed alongside one side. Stare down into it to give the mind's eye the illusion of having two parallel limbs. Move one hand, see the other, once dead but now reborn. The magic of a mirror-box built to deceive the brain into controlling what was destroyed and forming new patterns of thinking. Imagining a fresh map of a false body to staunch the pain.

He tries other things. Afternoons at tea confiding long-ago thoughts to Lady Sharon. Her permanent youthful appearance fools him sometimes, granting him the luxury of feeling young minus the burden. Weekends with his brother's family, redeeming for time lost. Months rehabilitating Lord Oscar after his stroke – the man always considered him a son. Gilbert visits graves, leaves flowers. Cries.

Oz is there, always. Sometimes he cries too, and they hold each other. Gilbert comforts Oz also, for life throws back ironic and terrible memories imprinted upon his lover's face. His body ages to twenty-three, twenty- four, twenty-five and Jack Vessalius mocks him from every reflection, eyes vapid and cold. Oz never grows out his hair and never wears the Vessalius green.

Oz remains shorter than Gilbert, but even so, with his head tucked into that special concave space in his side, Gilbert remembers the consoling hugs Jack gave him and Vincent. A terrible configuration, that obsessive fallen hero and this remorseful flawed saint. Sometimes, Gilbert attempts to understand Jack's motivations for everything, yet it is the moments that he can do so readily that terrify him the most (because Gil is all too familiar with fixations that can destroy, as a young boy who fought the impossible to fulfill a yearning.)

More years pass and Oz finally defeats the specter of Jack Vessalius the way nature intended: through the silvery crop of thistle-down hairs and the delicate press-cut wrinkles on his brow. Gilbert says Oz is the most gorgeous person he has ever seen and his beauty outlasts the days.

They become tottering old men on garden benches, feeding pigeons, getting into good-natured tiffs, watching the next generation picnic on the grassy loam.

"Why don't you get a new arm?"

Little Vince's tiny fingers tug at his shirtsleeve. Gilbert glances down at the toddler and recalls the kisses he bestowed upon Vincent's eyelids before they laid him in the ground. These eyes that stare up at him are joyful and uniform in color. The child doesn't have his grandfather's looks at all.

"What do you mean?"

"I saw a man with a metal arm that moves like a real one. 'Cept he had porcelain fingers, all fine and smooth. He says the gears get stuck sometimes, but he can move it pretty good. Why don't you get one of those?"

His curious voice contains his brother Vincent's trademark question curl at the end, and those eyes are shining in playful curiosity. A pang runs through Gil at the reminder, and then fades away. Everything which hurts fades quicker than it used to. Yet Gilbert is brimming with so much experience that sometimes, in the mornings, when his body begins to protest, he wonders if it's because of all the days stored up inside him, threatening to topple out of his frail shell.

Such small hands and Gil grips both of them in his larger one, spotted and calloused by age, yet remaining strong.

"Because," and Gilbert smiles, "sometimes, I don't even realize it's gone."

Fin.


End file.
